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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22381033">Hospitals &amp; Waiting Rooms</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibertyKingdom/pseuds/LibertyKingdom'>LibertyKingdom</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Miami Vice (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, anoseforrottenapples</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:13:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,004</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22381033</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibertyKingdom/pseuds/LibertyKingdom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Crockett finds a bullet with his name on it, Tubbs meets a friendly lady in the waiting room. <br/>Based on this prompt: <br/>“Your eyes aren’t focusing. Just close them for ten minutes.” Jane patted the shoulder of the exhausted-looking woman sitting next to her in the hospital waiting room. She was there with a friend who's husband had just come out of surgery. While Minnie was with Frederic, she had waited out here to give them some privacy. With nothing else to distract her, her keen attention had quickly fallen on the young woman who dropped in the chair next to her.--ANoseForRottenApples</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ricki Tubbs/ Sonny Crockett, Tubbs/Crockett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hospitals &amp; Waiting Rooms</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The walls in hospitals are always so sanitized and absent of comforting decor. Not that she’d ever be able to care about some painting when her mind was heavily preoccupied with thoughts concerning her partner. It felt to her, like a glorified prison sans bars across doors and over windows.</p><p>While Sonny was typically one to quickly bounce back from a great many kinds of wounds, this one just might end up being fatal. To make matters worse, it was all her fault! She should have anticipated the Colombian stand-off during the crystal-rock deal with Lorca-Mendez and his chick. But she hadn’t. This oversight might just be the most costly mistake she had made since her departure from New York. Guilt, like all consuming acid burns at every corner of her heart.  </p><p>He was so ungodly ashen in spite of his natural sun-kissed tan. The scarlet -correction, his scarlet stained into every pore, every crack, and every groove of her still trembling hands. Tubbs doesn’t much care that her expensive jacket is beyond salvageable. In the end, it could easily be replaced. But Sonny couldn’t. </p><p>Ricki held his cold hand as he lay there motionless in the hospital bed. His body was connected to a myriad of machines. Each one producing a jarring melody that she would not soon forget. But she had to relinquish her grasp on him so that the doctors could attend to his wounds.</p><p>The first surgery was agonizing to wait through and Tubbs did so, outside the operating room’s door. Her gaze never departing from the hands that held his life in the balance. Relief overwhelms her as he makes it out alive. However, it is short lived. For Sonny was scarcely back in the recovery room for eight hours when the doctor imparts that they would have to go back in. The bullet was lodged in his spine and he hadn’t been stable enough for the operation the first time around. Waiting out this second more extensive surgery was almost more than Ricki could humanly bear. He had been hemorrhaging, barely clinging to life.</p><p>Tubbs is only acutely aware of the passage of time. It has been fifteen hours and thirty-two minutes since the thunderous shot. Fifteen hours and twenty-five minutes since she desperately tugged Crockett’s fallen body from the violently rumbling path of the Metro-train. It has been fifteen hours flat since their arrival at the hospital via life-flight. And so time goes plodding forward in spite of her desire to stop it.</p><p>With every ticking beat rising from her wrist watch, her heart hangs in the balance between hope and hellish despair. For should Sonny perish, he would take her heart to the depths of the earth with him. From the moment he had been shot, Tubbs had been vividly reliving the incident. Her logic based mind spun it’s wheels working and re-working the number of things she could have done differently to change the outcome.</p><p>Having drained her energy for pacing outside the operating room where they were assisting Crockett, she finds her way into the waiting room. The air there felt stale, rife with the anticipation of equally anxious folks. The atmosphere combined with the ninth cup of coffee does little to cure her pensive state. She had been up for forty-nine hours straight consumed by work and now- this disastrous outcome. Despite her better judgement, Tubbs fills another Styrofoam cup full of the bitter and rather tepid hospital supplied coffee.</p><p>Its raining, she notes. Her gaze falling towards the expansive window. It almost felt fitting that the dark clouds shared her innermost grief. If things had gone down the way they were supposed to, she and Crockett would be completing their reports at the OCB instead of tarrying here. But it can’t be helped. No. She couldn’t go back and fix things.</p><p>Ricki withdraws Sonny’s badge from the confines of her pocket as she puts the coffee down. Fingers ghost along the icy curves and linger over the bullet mark. It was ironic. The item that most endangered their lives on a daily bases had served as a life preserver. Or, so she hopes. It had prevented his instant death. But she would have to see if he’d pull through this.</p><p>Her feet shuffle forward almost before she realized that she is moving again. This time, she slumps down into a stiff waiting-room chair. While normally, she would have returned the badge to her pocket, this time, she keeps it in her hands. It was better to toy with it than her St. Christopher pendant.</p><p>Tubbs had scarcely registered her lack of focus when it is brought to her attention by the lady beside her. Lazy hues, tempered in a watery pink, flicker over the speaker with something akin to interest. “I….” She starts, using her legs to push herself up in the chair a little straighter.</p><p>“Your eyes aren’t focusing. Just close them for ten minutes.” The sagely woman states.</p><p>Restful dozing almost sounded preposterous at such a time as this! Yet, for some reason, Tubbs allows her eyes to drift closed. But with the darkness, the visions start to gradually creep back in. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t make it,” she murmurs in confidence. “Sorry. I… I’ve been here a really long time.” Her thumb and fingers rub heavily at her eyes. It wasn’t until she had dared pressed her lids closed that she discovered how genuinely exhausted she had become. Unfortunately, her waiting time was bound to get much longer- almost infinite in length. “Pardon the blood and probably the smell. I haven’t left the hospital and I don’t have the heart to do so in order to shower and change.” Ricki adds in a brief moment of self-awareness. She was still in a state of shock.</p><p>“You?” She prompts, not wanting to make this about her own struggle. “Are you here for someone close to you?” Ricki’s eyes slowly pry open to examine the woman.</p>
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